“I feel it tastes like a garlic bagel with cream cheese,” whispered the conspiratorial cashier as I bought my pint of Van Leeuwen’s new restricted version Glass Onion ice cream. Fittingly for a thriller movie tie-in, this ice cream is a thriller taste, however the style that was extra on my thoughts was horror. Relaxation assured, although, that this taste’s identify just isn’t a pink herring — it assaults you with an awesome odor of onion as quickly as you peel open the pint.
Pushing onwards to research the scene of what some may name a meals crime, I famous the ice cream base gave the impression to be vanilla, streaked with a viscous darkish brown swirl. Earlier than my first spoonful even made it to my mouth, I used to be impressed by its soft-but-not-airy, velvety-but-not-heavy texture that hinted at top quality.
If I needed to sum the style up in a single phrase (apart from “HUH?”), it could be “complicated.” The foremost taste was undeniably — and unsurprisingly — the outstanding and dominant onion, which appeared to originate from the gooey, gluey swirl and was potent with a faintly acrid aftertaste that was welcome amidst the decadent vanilla’s silky sweetness. I couldn’t fairly pinpoint the remainder of the swirl’s uncommon (or onionusual) style, but it surely appeared to have notes of each candy and savory, which made me guess that it concerned sea salt caramel. I used to be genuinely shocked and delighted when, after I’d lastly gotten acclimated to this unusual but additionally surprisingly addictive taste, a scoop of what had been heretofore easy immediately additionally included a brittle chunk of… one thing.
I’m betting that this mysterious mix-in was deliberately hidden deeper within the pint so as to add a component of shock. I detected some sugariness and crispiness that made me consider honeycomb, and likewise made me keen to search out one other of those items. However as my ice cream quickly melted, I encountered no extra of the cryptic crispies, solely a sequence of more and more oversaturated patches of swirl that tasted like straight-up onion powder, however with odd, extraordinarily intense notes of tartness and acidity that jogged my memory of balsamic vinegar. As soon as the vanilla ice cream had turn out to be too soupy to be an enough counterbalance, the omnipresent onion simply turned overpoweringly gross. On that low observe, I headed to Google so I may extra completely curse the perpetrator behind this fetid frenzy of flavors.
It seems that that is vanilla ice cream with Greek yogurt, bourbon caramelized onion jam, and – sure!!!! – crystallized honeycomb sweet (I suppose I simply acquired an especially sparse batch). Like several satisfying thriller, the clues are all clear in hindsight: I can see now how the Greek yogurt was what supplied that inexplicable tartness, whereas the swirl’s ambiguous taste profile and consistency do, looking back, appear fairly jammy, and hey, I not less than get some partial credit score for choosing up on a component of caramel, proper?
I’d like to finish this evaluate by quoting one other beloved piece of cinema: Shrek, the place the metaphor “Onions have layers” is used to remind us that even bizarre issues are at all times extra nuanced than they seem. Very similar to onions (and ogres), Glass Onion ice cream definitely does have layers, however I can perceive why some may not wish to expertise them. Now that I’ve cracked the case, I can’t see any cause to ever revisit this product myself. Hopefully the film fares higher!
Bought Value: $10.50
Dimension: 14 oz
Bought at: Van Leeuwen
Score: 6 out of 10
Diet Information: (2/3 cup) 250 energy, 14 grams of fats, 9 grams of saturated fats, 0 grams of trans fats, 85 milligrams of ldl cholesterol, 160 milligrams of sodium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 24 grams of sugar (together with 18 grams of added sugar), and 4 grams of protein.
